THE IKONTROVERSY

The locals, the resort and the new Big Sky

This
is the first installment in an ongoing series centered on Big Sky’s growth, the
challenges it presents and potential solutions. While the Ikon Pass is a
contributing factor to this growth, it’s not alone. Ikon serves as our
jumping-off point to investigate the broader dynamics at work in Big Sky.

By Bay StephensEBS LOCAL EDITOR

BIG SKY – In 2008, Vail Resort’s Epic
Pass burst onto the ski scene, offering relatively cheap season passes with
unlimited access to a dozen Vail-owned resorts in the American West. On its
heels, the Mountain Collective landed in 2012 as four resorts partnered to
allow two days of skiing at each.

Enter the Ikon Pass, the first real
competitor to Epic, which debuted in January of 2018, and granted unlimited
access to 14 resorts and up to seven days at 23 other destinations, including
Big Sky, for the 2018-2019 season.

Throughout this first full winter, the
Ikon Pass became the subject of local grumblings in partner ski towns across
the U.S. that are having busier seasons than usual. The disgruntlement and
disparaging stickers directed at Ikon got so bad that three different heads of ski
resorts wrote letters to their respective communities in Aspen, Jackson and Big
Sky.

The letter’s message: Be nice to Ikon
passholders since we were all first-timers here once, too. According to
multiple interviews by EBS staff, the letter left many Big Sky locals feeling
reprimanded, unappreciated and distanced from the resort they love.

In the wake of Middleton’s letter, EBS
gathered the perspectives of locals, the resort and community leaders to determine
whether the Ikon Pass is really the problem, or just the tip of an iceberg, indicating
larger issues of growth and a lack of communication in the Big Sky community.

The local factor

On any given Saturday, families and
individuals have had to find spots on the floor and against walls to eat their
lunches in the packed upstairs cafeteria of the Mountain Mall at Big Sky
Resort.

An influx of skiers is palpable this
season. And the pinch has locals talking. From Big Sky restaurants to area watering
holes, the ski hill to the laundromat, a tone of discontent has percolated
throughout the community this winter.

“The cry is that [locals] just feel
they’re not treated equitably,” said Candace Carr Strauss, CEO of Visit Big Sky
and the Big Sky Chamber of Commerce, at a recent VBS board meeting.

For many local residents, Middleton’s
letter solidified this sentiment of being left behind.

“At the end of the day, there are all of
these people that are saying, ‘Hey, we need some love, Big Sky [Resort],’” Lotus
Pad owner Alex Omania told EBS.

Brian Hurlbut, executive director of the
Arts Council of Big Sky, agreed that the letter could have offered more
solutions rather than asking community members to be nice to Ikon visitors. “[It
was] kind of a slap in the face to the community of people that have lived here
and skied here for a long time,” he said.

Both Hurlbut and Omania think this winter
brought more visitors than Big Sky’s infrastructure could handle, and Ikon has
only added to the mix.

“Tourism and visitors have been on the
rise for a number of years, so we don’t necessarily need more people right
now,” Hurlbut said. “And that’s what the Ikon pass is doing. It’s bringing even
more people who otherwise wouldn’t have come here.”

While some visitors came to Big Sky long
before the Ikon debut, the pass has opened the door for others, such as Elease
Miller and Donna Scott, Ikon passholders hailing from Boulder, Colorado, on a 24-member
group trip with the Flatirons Ski Club.

“[Ikon] brought us here, or we wouldn’t
have come,” Miller said. “You can’t afford single day tickets anymore at any of
the areas.”

The Lone Peak Tram has been one
contentious issue for Big Sky’s passionate skiers who hold a tremendous sense
of pride in the iconic 15-person ski lift. Hurlbut said the line has been too
long this year, so he doesn’t wait in it though it seems unfair to him that
Ikon passholders have the same access.

“That brings in the question, is [Ikon]
starting to devalue the other season pass products that [the resort] offers,”
Hurlbut said, adding that he pays a premium to have unrestricted access to the
tram. “The Ikon Pass includes tram access. They’re not paying any more [money].”

He suggested some sort of upcharge for
Ikon Pass users who had their sights set on skiing off the peak, shortening the
line for everyone else and not affecting those indifferent to the tram.

For Omania, the influx of visitors throws
into sharp relief a shortage of employees, many of whom work multiple jobs such
as at the resort and in her restaurant. Although the increase is good for
business, she says, the lack of employees and incentive to keep them makes
running the business challenging.

Season passes are a key benefit for
workers, Omania said, which is why she bought seven for her managers, though
she wishes she could provide passes for all her workers. Her budget for
benefits revolves around this expenditure, she said, adding that it’s the same
for many of the area’s small businesses.

One solution in Omania’s mind would be
for the resort to give ski passes to local businesses to distribute among
employees, helping reduce the strain on these shops to afford the passes and
keep workers on payroll. She pointed out that this poses no threat to further
lengthening lift lines because businesses buy passes for their workers anyway.

Omania would like to see Big Sky Resort
take more of a leadership role in connecting with local businesses considering
the resort plays a keystone role in the community. She said working together to
create more immediate solutions to the stressors pressing the community would
benefit everyone.

“This is a really good opportunity for [the
resort] to be a positive role model in this community,” Omania said. “… Ikon is
not really the issue. The issue is what all these people are doing to the
community and how we just aren’t ready for all these people.”

Is Ikon really the problem?﻿

If the pattern at Big Sky resembles
Jackson or Aspen, Ikon is only a sliver of the issue and points to larger and
sweeping undercurrents.

Attributed to record snowfall, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort’s slopes swarmed this season. JHMR president Mary Kate Buckley wrote in her letter to Jackson Hole News and Guide that local passholders comprised 39 percent of the resort’s total skiers while Ikon skiers represented 16 percent. She added that half of that 16 percent were visitors who skied Jackson in past seasons anyway, only on different pass offerings such as Mountain Collective or day tickets.

Aspen’s season tracks a similar pattern. According
to Jeff Hanle, Aspen Skiing Company’s VP of communications, Colorado’s been
pounded with snow this year, and by powder-starved locals following last
season’s drought. Local pass sales are up 10-12 percent over two seasons ago, Hanle
told EBS, a more comparable season to this year in terms of snowfall, but up a whopping
40 percent over the dry spell of last season.

Hanle said Ikon accounts for 9 percent of
the 1.2 million skier visits to Aspen’s four mountains as of March 14.

“You can’t point the finger at Ikon
passholders here,” Hanle said. “What I tell my friends and neighbors: When
you’re standing in a line with people, look next you. They’re your friends and
neighbors for the most part.”

Big Sky Resort has not released its skier
visitation data and Taylor Middleton declined to interview for this story, so
it’s difficult to say exactly what the case is here. However, one statistic—increasing
numbers of ambulance transports—can act as a sort of proxy for visitation. The
numbers show what everybody already knows: Big Sky is blowing up.

According to Big Sky Fire Department
Chief William Farhat, ambulance transports are 37 percent higher for February
of this year than the same month last year, which was likewise 37 percent higher
than February of 2017, before Ikon had any role in Big Sky’s visitation.

“That’s a lot,” Farhat said. “Two years
in a row, you’ve had these large jumps.”

These leaps in visitation growth make it
difficult to pin Ikon as the sole cause of booming visitation numbers, but
rather highlight Big Sky’s overall success at marketing itself as a community.
Farhat said 90 percent of the ambulance transports in February were for
nonresidents, the highest the department has ever recorded and a far cry from
the average 70-75 percent during ski seasons past.

“Ninety percent is a shockingly high
number,” Farhat said, adding that the influx of visitors and increasing
frequency of service calls can leave his staff stretched thin. “It’s a lot to
manage. We’re outstripping any growth projections we’ve ever had.”

Like many other resort towns, Big Sky
pumps local and state dollars into billboards, newsletters and public relations
campaigns across the nation. Farhat says the scenario is a Catch-22.

“As we market ourselves as a community,
we’re reaping the benefits but there are also challenges,” Farhat said. “Big
Sky is a victim of its own marketing.”

The bus showed up﻿

Big Sky’s growth feels more exponential
than linear, prompting the Big Sky Water and Sewer District to get the ball
rolling on a $21.7 million plant upgrade to meet the blistering growth. The
Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport has seen record-breaking passenger
volume for the ninth consecutive year in a row, according to a Jan. 9 airport press
release; the facility handled 142,753 more passengers in 2018 than 2017, an increase
of 11.9 percent.

Yet Ikon is taking the heat for Big Sky
Resort’s longer lines.

The board of Visit Big Sky, the area’s
official marketing entity, addressed negativity surrounding Ikon during its
March 21 meeting.

“There is a significant issue and
misperception with where this growth is coming from,” said Annie Pinkert, Big
Sky Resort’s VP of business and also a VBS board member, during the meeting. “Ikon
represents a small, very small slice of the growth of skier visits to Big Sky
Resort.”

Along with increased air seats, season
pass growth is a major contributor to the rise in skier visits as Big Sky and
Bozeman grow at six and three times the national average, respectively, she
told the VBS board.

“If we were to lower our price to $949
(the price of an Ikon Pass) for people that are skiing 144 days a year, you
would have lift lines like you can’t imagine,” she said. “You can’t have both
low prices and no volume. You’ve got to choose.”

Pinkert added that every visitor drawn to
Big Sky pays into resort tax in some way.

Ennion Williams, also a VBS board member,
said the rush of visitors this year was a realized dream 10 years in the making.
The effort, he said, was sparked after the Great Recession when community
members asked for resort tax funding to market Big Sky as the “Biggest Skiing
in America,” the end goal being for the resort to top 500,000 skier days in a
year while benefits trickle down to surrounding businesses and the community.

In tandem with a decade of sustained and
coordinated marketing, Williams said the 2017-2018 ski season, which saw
massive snow in Montana and a dearth for southern ski areas, put Big Sky
squarely on the map.

“This winter the bus showed up, and the
bus had the Ikon Pass on it,” Williams said. “Everybody’s fixated on [it as the
problem], just because this year we started the Ikon Pass … These people were
coming anyway.”

“This is the new Big Sky,” Williams
continued. “It’s not going to change. Next year we’re going to have more people
than we had this year.”

Stay
tuned for our next installment, in which we will examine growth as it relates
to Big Sky’s unique housing market.